It’s amazing to think how much people owe their intellectual success to their support system. To be brutally honest, for me it wasn’t that way. My support system was rooted within the school’s network, and outside that, I had little to hinge on. Much of what I did outside of school didn’t impact the way I studied or how well I did. After all, I was very much a homebody so I stayed inside mostly. If anything, the lack of things to do outside of school made studying the only thing to do. My environment fostered my academic success, but I place it more on my motivation and the intellect I was born with.
For my last two years at high school, I lived with my grandparents. Had my parents been around, I know they would have been very supportive of me and ushered me to do my best. But with my dad and my brothers living a thousand miles away, it was hard for them to offer me long-range support. My grandparents always encouraged me to do my best: in fact, my grandma would help me study. The best way I learn is if I take information and verbally recite it, so I would often have my grandma quiz me on Spanish vocabulary, or on some notes I compiled for a particular subject. Since my immediate family lived so far away from me, I felt as if I had to go above and beyond the norm to prove something -- what that something was, I’m not even sure. In this manner, I felt almost similar to Cedric and how he felt he had something to prove to his dad. Much like him, I let this drive motivate myself -- so in that way I suppose my family drove me to do better.
My friends did not do much to support me academically. Sure, they were a great source of competition. Having the soul of a competitor, I constantly felt the need to check on my friends’ test grades and see if I could outsmart them. Eventually, though, I just settled for being top-notch in one area rather than a jack-of-all-trades. Once I became the cream of the crop in the language department, my friends actually encouraged me to do my best. Though, their form of encouragement came in the form of using me as their personal dictionary. Although that may not seem like encouragement to the normal person, to me it was. I would feel very embarrassed (I still do!) if someone asks me a word in another language that I completely blank on. I made it a point to not only memorize words, but let them sink into my mind.
My life outside of school was nonexistent. I never made the team for the three sports I tried out for, which gave me a surplus of time and left me with clubs to sweeten my college résumé. Of the clubs that weren’t extremely nepotistic, only the Honor Societies remained. At the time I had wanted to get into William and Mary, a public Ivy League school in Virginia that my father had attended, which of course relied heavily on extracurriculars. In order to maintain my GPA high enough to get invited into the Honor Societies, I had to dedicate all my time to studying.
These factors all helped me succeed, though the responsibility ultimately falls on the individual. Many people are granted with a surplus of opportunities and never rise to the occasion. Some that were born in a less fortunate life motivate themselves to search for an opening that they may never see in their lifetime. Others, such as myself, were born with the will and the tools to succeed. It was my own volition to succeed that influenced my success, and not anyone else’s empty praise.
For my last two years at high school, I lived with my grandparents. Had my parents been around, I know they would have been very supportive of me and ushered me to do my best. But with my dad and my brothers living a thousand miles away, it was hard for them to offer me long-range support. My grandparents always encouraged me to do my best: in fact, my grandma would help me study. The best way I learn is if I take information and verbally recite it, so I would often have my grandma quiz me on Spanish vocabulary, or on some notes I compiled for a particular subject. Since my immediate family lived so far away from me, I felt as if I had to go above and beyond the norm to prove something -- what that something was, I’m not even sure. In this manner, I felt almost similar to Cedric and how he felt he had something to prove to his dad. Much like him, I let this drive motivate myself -- so in that way I suppose my family drove me to do better.
My friends did not do much to support me academically. Sure, they were a great source of competition. Having the soul of a competitor, I constantly felt the need to check on my friends’ test grades and see if I could outsmart them. Eventually, though, I just settled for being top-notch in one area rather than a jack-of-all-trades. Once I became the cream of the crop in the language department, my friends actually encouraged me to do my best. Though, their form of encouragement came in the form of using me as their personal dictionary. Although that may not seem like encouragement to the normal person, to me it was. I would feel very embarrassed (I still do!) if someone asks me a word in another language that I completely blank on. I made it a point to not only memorize words, but let them sink into my mind.
My life outside of school was nonexistent. I never made the team for the three sports I tried out for, which gave me a surplus of time and left me with clubs to sweeten my college résumé. Of the clubs that weren’t extremely nepotistic, only the Honor Societies remained. At the time I had wanted to get into William and Mary, a public Ivy League school in Virginia that my father had attended, which of course relied heavily on extracurriculars. In order to maintain my GPA high enough to get invited into the Honor Societies, I had to dedicate all my time to studying.
These factors all helped me succeed, though the responsibility ultimately falls on the individual. Many people are granted with a surplus of opportunities and never rise to the occasion. Some that were born in a less fortunate life motivate themselves to search for an opening that they may never see in their lifetime. Others, such as myself, were born with the will and the tools to succeed. It was my own volition to succeed that influenced my success, and not anyone else’s empty praise.